The Girl from Berlin

The Girl from Berlin by Ronald H. Balson
My rating: 3 of 5 stars

An old lady living in Italy is to be evicted from her property which she owned since she remembers.
An US lawyer - Catherine and her husband - Liam, are asked to help her.
They are given a old handwritten memoir of Ada, a German girl with Jewish roots which should help is solving all mysteries surrounding this case.
The book gives an equal share of space to those two yarns - entries from the diary alternate with the actual events.
My first objection - why Catherine did not read the diary much faster? She got lots of time during travel from USA to Tuscany and she could easily skip most of the story to read the decisive last pages which connect to the current problems.
The answer is obvious, it would kill the book.
Unfortunately for me it is not a good answer. From the very beginning I felt manipulated by the author.
Secondly, the story of legal efforts of Catherine and Liam was for me terribly repetitive and boring, I continued reading only to learn the Ada story.
The Ada story - for me it got an additional attraction - classical music scene in 193o-ties.
I found some parts of this story unbelievable, but I was still touched by heroism and sacrifices of main characters and it was the only reason I continued the book and rated it so high.
I still consider it as a foul play of the author.
P.S. One of main characters of Ada story is a famous conductor of Berlin Philharmonics - Gustav Furtwängler. After a war he has been investigated by an US denazification commission. I recommend a very good movie about it - Taking Sides - CLICK.


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